Sir – Last week’s headline and editorial highlighted the complex planning issues which face the site at Water Eaton where Chiltern Railways hope to build a major new Parkway station to serve Oxford.

CPRE supports the broad objectives of the Evergreen3 Scheme, ie in promoting more sustainable travel and improving local rail capacity, but our concern is that much of the development at and adjacent to Water Eaton is within the Oxford Green Belt.

The creation and protection of the Green Belt as the unique setting of the ancient city of Oxford has been an important achievement.

Yet there are growing pressures and continual “nibbling away” at this fragile area of land.

The Water Eaton site was already complicated, with the park-and-ride, the aggregates depot, and the Grundons MRF proposal to replace the grain silo — which was approved in principle in 2008.

It is of serious concern to CPRE that to make space for the new station Chiltern propose to relocate the aggregates depot to a new site alongside the railway taking Green Belt agricultural land and that the proposed MRF may have to be displaced altogether to another Green Belt site.

Removal of the disused grain silo may well be a red letter day for people in Kidlington and northern Oxford, but it is unacceptable that another piece of Green Belt should be sacrificed to achieve that.

The scheme would also intensify the “urbanisation” of the narrow gap between Kidlington and Oxford, when one of the fundamental aims of Green Belt policy is to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open.

All this underlines the need to clarify as soon as possible what can be reasonably accommodated on the Water Eaton site without compromising the Green Belt.

Helena Whall, Campaign manager, CPRE Oxfordshire, Holton